sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems Ringing 1A2 from Asterisk

I have an ITT KSU in my house with a half dozen 6 button key sets. At one point I had 3 CO lines feeding it, and a dial intercom. The three CO lines were also set up with current detectors so I could have fax/modem/etc light the lamps and play nice with Hold. I am down to just on CO line hot (line 3 went when SHE moved out, and line 2 left when I decided to stop paying for a dedicated modem line, which seemed silly since I had DSL (which works fine with the 1A2)

I have recently started playing with Asterisk, and I have the standard Digium card (one FXS, one FXO port). I want to have the Asterisk system appear on Line 2 of the 1A2. After some cross connecting, it appears to be connected. I get dial tone, the lights come on, but I can't get the 1A2 to ring. If I plug a STE into the asterisk port, I can ring that. I have talk battery (I discovered my DirecTv box has been trying to phone home for years now - it now argues with Asterisk on a regular basis..)

The 1A2 system as SanBar 40000F cards in it. I also have a bunch of "Brand-Rex" LC-400E cards from another KSU, but no documents for them on strapping options.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

W

What's the ringing voltage the Asterisk is putting out? You need at least 70V to ring the 1A2.

My Fluke Model 16 DMM is reporting 46Volts. Not sure how well it works on less than 60hz.

Can you ring a plain old bell system phone with a ringer in it? Take one of your key sets and wire the bell to T&R and see if you can ring it. I really doubt you can with only 46 volts. I know nothing about the Asterisk, does your station port have options for ringing voltage?

When I connect a plain old tel set to the line, Asterisk is able to ring it. (The butt set also will chirp when connected).

If you can ring the ringer on one of your Key sets you should be able to ring through the key system. If you're talking about a plain old phone with one of the newer ringers, well haven't really proven anything as they take less voltage to ring.

This was a good old fasioned rotary phone with electro-mechancial ringer.

But as you pointed out the voltage was low. There is an option in Asterisk to boost the ringer voltage - and instructions on how to do that, but, what was not mentioned in the documents, it might not "take" right away. After changing the boostringer option in the config file, and recompiling and reinstalling the Zaptel software, I then stopped the asterisk process, removed and reloaded zaptel (via the modprobe command) and restarted asterisk, and now it works!

I guess the upshot here, is that Asterisk (with the digium card) can ring a 1A2 KSU, but you may need to restart the software after recompiling and reloading after setting the boostringer option on. (And my 1A2 KSU did NOT need to be restarted for DST changes).

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for letting us know you got it working. The only reboot you had to do on 1A2 is kick it a second time as you were pushing it out the door.

Now, now. The 1A2 is in the same class as the M1 Garand. Big, old, heavy, reliable, bulletproof, and GETS THE JOB DONE.
Asterisk and M16, different class. Small, light, semi-reliable, requires extreme care and maintanence. Decide for yourself regarding how well they do their assigned tasks. (Do have to say the M16 is supposed to be much better than it used to be.)
John C.

I have had a 1a2 system for a few years now, with Asterisk since 2005. The Digium board has problems ringing any real phone as does any ATA out there. But 1a2 has a high input impedance and works just fine for me with ATA boxes like Sipura, Grandstream, etc. On the CO side there's never a problem with FXO port detection. If I can ever find a CarrierAccess CMG router card, or an affordable T1 PCI card I want to go the next step, using a channel bank to interface with Asterisk. On my desks at home there's a 1a2 phone ( 564, 2564) always available and on my main home office desk a GXP-2000 IP phone. I use the Grandstream mostly to monitor extensions in our home office and to see caller ID, but when real calls come in I ALWAYS use the 2564 phone. Asterisk plays nice unless you ask it to supply power to a ringer. Yet 1a2 is self-contained and with it's high input impedance for ringing and dedicated t-r pairs to each phone, is ideal for my use. I also am using Trixbox because I got tired of spending hours each time I wanted to change config files. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the BLF lights to activate A-leads on the 1a2 phones....